Official MLBlog of the Kansas City Royals front office.

Ned Yost media session: September 15

Ned Yost met with the media before tonight’s game against the Angels. Like every team, there has been some injuries this season, some significant, with Royals players. Yost talked about his thoughts about the injuries. “You have guys that have certain body types that enable them to go 162 games. I mean knock on wood, but you know guys like (Alcides) Escobar, (Mike) Moustakas, (Eric) Hosmer, and (Jeff) Francoeur have never really had anything that slows them down, but then you get others who are really good players like Chris Getz, (Lorenzo) Cain and (Jarrod) Dyson that one or two things pop up every year. There is nothing you can really do to prevent it, it’s just their body types,” said Yost.

Last night, Angels’ player Kendrys Morales came up to pinch hit, who statistically is a much better hitter from the left side. The Royals pitcher at the time, Aaron Crow, has been good against both lefties and righties, but Yost made the decision to turn Morales around by bringing in lefty Tim Collins. Someone from the media asked the question, “When you are doing those match ups, how much do you gauge what that hitter does vs. what your pitcher can do?” Yost answered with, “I gauge everything. Those are tough because what made it worse for me was it was a 50/50 chance because I felt like Crow was throwing the ball good. Morales burned Crow in Anaheim in a game and from that point on, you think about so many things over the summer, but you make little mental notes as a manager.” He then followed with, “That was a mental note that I made that yes, Morales is a phenomenal hitter, he can hit homers from both sides, but he is a better hitter left-handed. Tim is getting righties out where they are only hitting .175 off him. You kind of add everything up and then you make your mind up and make the change. The thinking was absolutely right, but it just didn’t work out.”

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